Those Irrepressible Neocons

April 26, 2011 10:54 am ET —
MJ Rosenberg

Will wonders never
cease?

Two neoconservatives
are out front urging President Obama to more energetically defend the human
rights of Arabs. Jennifer
Rubin, who writes for the Washington
Post, and her mentor, Rachel
Decter Abrams, the godmother of neoconservatism, believe that Obama should
step up and defend the Syrian people against the repressive Assad regime.

Abrams, in
particular, has stellar neocon credentials. She is married to Elliot Abrams
(the Reagan assistant secretary of state who was indicted
by a special prosecutor for intentionally deceiving Congress about the
Iran-Contra arms deal). She is also the step-daughter of Norman Podhoretz,
longtime editor of the neocon flagship Commentary,
and the sister of John Podhoretz, its current editor.

Jennifer Rubin, on
the other hand, was just one of those plugging along in Kingdom Neocon (she was
a contributing editor to Commentary
and its blog, Contentions)
until recently, when the neocon
editor of the Washington Post editorial
page, Fred Hiatt, plucked her from obscurity and brought her to the Post.

Beyond their Commentary roots, the two are almost ideologically
identical. And that means that they are both driven, above all other
considerations, by dedication to the concept of Greater Israel (a concept which
is taken more seriously inside the Beltway than it is in Israel itself).

In her first
column in the Post, Rubin
introduced herself by noting that she is a "harsh critic" of the Middle East
peace process, which, in her case, means total devotion to the vision of
Binyamin Netanyahu: championing the Gaza war, and attacking anyone
(particularly Jews at J Street) who dares to oppose Israeli policy. And,
naturally, Rubin despises President Obama, whose "sympathies for the Muslim
word," she
complains, "take precedence over those, such as they are, for his fellow
citizens."

Abrams' views of
Israel are even farther to the right. In fact, Abrams has a hard time
remembering that she is an American, not an Israeli. For instance, in 2010, she
penned a love letter to Israel which included these words: "I know why we cry
for this land and fight for this land and love this land. I know why we cannot
let go of any part of this land. This is the land of my people, and I know
why." (In the White House, her husband Elliot was known for undercutting
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on all matters relating to Israel.)

The bottom line
with Abrams and Rubin is that they are all about Israel. Virtually every
position either one takes is related, in some way or other, either to Israel or
to flattering those who share their "no compromise with Palestinians"
worldview. They are right-wingers only because they trust the right on Israel;
their views on American issues are "icing" designed to ingratiate themselves
with people they consider to be Israel's staunchest allies. (Jennifer Rubin, for
instance, defended
Sarah Palin against her Jewish critics, accusing them of not admiring Palin
because they are intellectual snobs and are uncomfortable with Track Palin's
service in the U.S. military!)

The one difference
between the two is Abrams' bizarre
obsession with gays and lesbians. She despises them and is quick to suggest
that any critic of Israel must be gay, which, in her lexicon, is the greatest
insult. On this, as on nothing else, Abrams abandons her defense of Israel,
which is well-known for being progressive on gay equality issues. (When it comes to gays, she is definitely more
Saudi than Israeli.)

All this brings me
to Rubin's
piece in which she bashes President Obama for not aggressively championing
the anti-Assad demonstrators in Syria. She prefaces that by noting that Obama
"shamefully missed a hinge moment in history when he failed to champion the
Iranian Green Movement in June 2009. It was both a moral and a geopolitical
failing of enormous proportions. And he now seems to be repeating his most
egregious foreign policy error."

She then cites her
mentor:

In sum, there is a growing sense that, as blogger Rachel Abrams put it,
the administration's "refusal to distinguish between oppressor and oppressed -
'we ... call on all sides to cease and desist from the use of violence' - shames
us in the world and endangers us."

Rubin approvingly cites
Bill Kristol (another neocon idol) who says that the administration is overly cautious
about fighting in Libya. "If you talk off the record with people from the
administration, they are terrified of having some American pilot shot down and
taken hostage," he grumbles.

The neocons, who
played such a large role in getting this country to invade Iraq (cost in
American lives: 4,400) certainly aren't "terrified" over such things.

The most absurd
thing about Rubin's and Abrams' sudden concern for Syrians, Iranians, Libyans (or
any other Muslim peoples' rights) is that it is transparently dishonest. Both
Abrams and Rubin cheered Israel's onslaught on Gaza and Lebanon, in which
thousands of civilians died. Both favor attacking Iran, an act that might well kill
thousands of innocent Iranians and provoke a deadly regional war. Neither has
ever expressed any concern over any Israeli action that took Arab lives. For
those two, either it never happened or was an unfortunate accident.

In other words,
when it comes to Muslims, Rubin and Abrams care about their democratic rights (except
those of Palestinians), but not necessarily their right to live.

One of the many
differences between the neocons and Obama is that he wants these revolutions to
succeed, and he understands that the quickest way to undermine the Arab Spring
is to make it appear to be engineered by the United States. That is also why
Obama was so cautious about Iran; the revolutionaries did not want to be seen
as U.S. pawns. Neocons just like sticking it to Obama, liberals, and anyone who
does not share their belief that the Israeli occupation is just fine.

So let's not hear
from this crowd about the poor Iranians or Syrians or Libyans, or whatever other
group they suddenly profess to care about. Better they should think about those
thousands of Americans, along with the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, who perished
as a consequence of the horrific war they enthusiastically agitated for. Don't
they have enough to atone for without adding more deadly U.S. military interventions?